Matt Davies: Movies in 3D

About

Matt Davies' is a Manchester based artist with a growing regional and national reputation. Movies in 3D is his first solo exhibition in a public gallery. Integral to his work is the reliance on existing images distributed through mass media, such as newspapers, online sources and tourist brochures. Collected from tangential research and his immediate surroundings, his paintings examine and interrogate notions of history and memory. Davies is interested in a range of ‘passé' utopian ideals such as the German Expressionist movement - in its attempt to express emotional experience through paint on canvas - and retro-futuristic imagery from 1970's lifestyle magazines. These sentiments are characterized through his simplified shapes, gestural brushstrokes and bright, yet washed-out colours, exploring the fallibility of memory and the blurring of fact and fiction. Davies often uses multiple photographic sources in one painting, intentionally creating misshaped relationships and narratives, composed seamlessly through the intuitiveness and immediacy of the brushstrokes. Relying on the medium of photography to capture a second in time, the works immortalize and elevate the status of the discarded images from visual culture to ‘high art' medium. Artist's Biography: Matt Davies's was selected for the prestigious John Moore's Painting Prize at Walker Gallery, Liverpool. His work has also been exhibited at Sale Waterside Art Gallery, Chapman Gallery, Salford University, Victoria Baths, The Lowry and Drumcroon Gallery. He has recently completed an Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A) placement. For further information and images contact: Clarissa Corfe — Contemporary Art Curator / Exhibitions Officer, Harris Museum & Art Gallery c.corfe@preston.gov.uk